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WELLNESS CONNECTION · Life BalanceChange Your Thoughts. Change Your Life.From the book One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way by Robert Maurer, PhDNovember 13, 2009 - 10:00AM Tiptoe Past Fear Your brain loves questions and won't reject them ... unless the question is so big it triggers fear. Questions such as, "How am I going to get thin (or rich, or married) by the end of the year?" or "What new product will bring in a million more dollars for the company?" are awfully big and frightening. These questions create fear in anyone on the receiving end - even when we're asking the question of ourselves. Instead of responding with playfulness, our brain, sensing the fear, suppresses creativity and shuts down access to the cortex (the thinking part of the brain) when we need it the most. One of the brain's strengths - the ability to go into a self-protective lockdown in times of danger - here becomes a crippling liability. By asking small, gentle questions, we keep the fight-or-flight response in the "off" position. Kaizen questions such as "What's the smallest step I can take to be more efficient?" or "What can I do in five minutes a day to reduce my credit card debt?" or "How could I find one source of information about adult education classes in my city?" allows us to bypass our fears. They allow the brain to focus on problem-solving and, eventually, actions. Ask a question often enough, and you'll find your brain storing the questions, turning them over, and eventually generating some interesting and useful responses. Although the mechanics of creativity - how the brain goes about producing a new thought - remains one of the vast unexplored frontiers of science, I've had decades of experience helping people move away from constriction and conformity and toward creativity. I believe that the mere act of posing the same question on a regular basis and waiting patiently for an answer mobilizes the cortex. A question is not demanding, not scary. It's fun. So when you ask small questions, your amygdala (where the fight-or-flight response occurs) will remain asleep, and the cortex, always hungry for a good time, will wake up and take notice. It will process and absorb the question and, in its own magical way, create answers when it is ready - which may be in that moment we are in the shower, driving or washing the dishes. Albert Einstein once asked, "Why is it I get my best ideas in the morning while I am shaving?" I wonder if he'd asked himself small questions - well, as small as questions about the nature of the universe can get - in the days or weeks or months before the best ideas came to him. Rated by 0 people:
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Recent PostsNovember 13, 2009 - 10:00AMChange Your Thoughts. Change Your Life.From the book One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way by Robert Maurer, PhDArchives |
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